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BEIRUT / AP
A wave of nighttime airstrikes hit a hospital in Syria supported by Doctors Without Borders and nearby buildings in the rebel-held part of the contested city of Aleppo, killing at least 38 people as the UN envoy for Syria appealed early Thursday on the US and Russia to help revive the peace talks and a cease-fire, which he said “hangs by a thread.”
Six hospital staff and three children were also among the casualties. The strikes, shortly before midnight onWednesday, hit the well-known Al Quds field hospital in the rebel-held district of Sukkari in Aleppo, according to opposition activists and rescue workers.
The chief Syrian opposition negotiator Mohammed Alloush blamed the government of President Bashar Assad for the deadly airstrikes. He told The Associated Press that the latest violence by government forces shows “the environment is not conducive to any political action.”
The Civil Defense, a volunteer first-responders agency whose members went to the scene of the attack, put the death toll at 30 and said the dead included six hospital staff. Among those slain was one of the last pediatricians remaining in opposition-held areas of the contested city and a dentist.
The agency, also known as the White Helmets, said the Al-Quds hospital and adjacent buildings were struck in four consecutive airstrikes. It said there were still victims buried under the rubble and that the rescue work continued.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 27 were killed, including three children.
Doctors Without Borders, also known by its French acronym MSF, said in a series of tweets also emailed to the AP that at least 14 patients and staff were among those killed, with the toll expected to rise.
“Destroyed MSF-supported hospital in Aleppo was well known locally and hit by direct airstrike on Wednesday,” it said.
A video posted online by the White Helmets showed a number of lifeless bodies, including those of children, being pulled out from a building and loaded into ambulances amid screaming and wailing. It also showed distraught rescue workers trying to keep onlookers away from the scene, apparently fearing more airstrikes.
Alloush, who was one of the leading negotiators of the opposition in the Geneva talks, described the airstrikes as one of the latest “war crimes” of Assad’s government.
“Whoever carries out these massacres needs a war tribunal and a court of justice to be tried for his crimes. He does not need a negotiating table,” Alloush told the AP in a telephone interview. “Now, the environment is not conducive for any political action.”
The February 27 cease-fire has been fraying in the past weeks as casualty figures from violence mount, particularly in Aleppo and across northern Syria. Airstrikes earlier this week also targeted a training center for the Syrian Civil Defense, leaving five of its team dead in rural Aleppo.
Since April 19, nearly 200 people have died, including at least 44 in an airstrike on a market place in rebel-held area in northern Idlib province, as well as dozens of civilians in government-held areas from rebel shelling.
The UN envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, briefed the UN Security Council via videoconference about the largely stalled indirect talks between the Western- and Saudi-backed opposition and envoys from Assad’s government, which has the backing of Moscow.
He said that after 60 days, the cessation of hostilities agreed to by both sides “hangs by a thread.”
“I really fear that the erosion of the cessation is unraveling the fragile consensus around a political solution, carefully built over the last year,” de Mistura said in his council briefing obtained by The Associated Press.
‘We must all be ashamed’
United Nations / AFP
The United Nation’s aid chief on Thursday strongly appealed to world powers to revive the ceasefire in Syria and put an end to the “massive human suffering” that has deprived millions of people of food and medicine.
“We must all be ashamed this is happening on our watch,” Stephen O’Brien told the Security Council during a meeting on the appalling humanitarian crisis from the five-year war.
The meeting came a day after UN peace envoy Staffan de Mistura told the council that the ceasefire that had allowed aid convoys to reach starving civilians in besieged towns was hanging by a thread.
Echoing De Mistura’s call, O’Brien appealed for action to salvage the ceasefire that went into force on February 27 and paved the way for peace talks.